Good Men
by rednightmare
Summary: "He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world." - Horace. A story of the Legion and one humble Legionnaire: Hadvar of Riverwood.
1. A Simple Name

**Author's Notes: Thought it would be fun to let everyone's favorite Average Joe Legionnaire get the spotlight for awhile. No long-term plans. **

**The whole purpose of this work is character development, so don't get too excited if that's not your thing. For those who haven't read any of my stuff before, you should know this about me: I **_**like**_** character development. A lot. So much I should probably marry it. Ah, Longwinded & Description-Heavy Backstory, is that an amulet of Mara you're wearing…? **

**No Dragonborn in this largely Civil War-based tale. Though there will be several original characters I hope you'll find amusing. And a massive Legion presence. Also, however, quite a few Cloaks. **

**Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

**GOOD MEN**

_He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world._  
_-Horace_

* * *

**A Simple Name**

Well, Hadvar couldn't say he was pleased about it.

The road between Falkreath and Helgen was poorly-beaten, woody and unremarkable. Of course, little words like these did nothing to faze their brave regiment; they had been marching since dawn, he and the stout twelve-man outfit General Tullius half-jokingly called his honor guard. Six hours now if the high-reaching sun was any judge. Hooves flattened timber chips and damp dirt; wagon wheels cut deep tracks; crimson capes were flung around necks to ward off pneumonia. Rays sliced the cool, dense mist and through fir canopies to dully light their steel loricas. A barrel of lantern oil had bucked its straps and cracked open just after they'd set off today – a resource these soldiers might have used against fleet enemy archers, fiery ambushes rigged in canyon passes or wildflowers – liquid bursting on fallen leaves. It had been their last full unit with miles left to go. But, as it always was in the Legion, you kept trodding on.

It looked as though rain might stop them 'ere too long, however. The morning was a dark one, sky plastered in shades of wet grey. The forest air was cold in that verdant and lung-biting way Skyrim's heartland tended to be during early springtime. It smelled heavily of these thick-bark conifers that crowded around them, flaking orange. Moss and ivy bearded fallen logs. Sap ran freely down the sides of woodpecker holes and gave everything a sweet, honey texture; you might have stuck your fingers in it and made water mugs taste like weak mead. Hadvar wouldn't have done that, though. He'd heard a story once about how Cousin Vari (Uncle Alvor's nana's nephew) somehow got a belly full of carpenter ants from a honeycomb and had to drink spider poison to kill them 'fore they ate his innards. Granted, most of the stories Uncle Alvor told were nonsense, but he wasn't going to take any chances here and now. This territory was rugged enough without getting sick on the back of his horse. It was uncut, clammy and rustled with the witch-tales of his youth.

And, more than anything else, it was teeming root-to-pinecone with bees.

Someone must have kicked a nest or something, because for the past three days, there had been a constant buzzing around Hadvar's ears. Furry hornets clustered in their apple sacks and harassed mounts haltered at rest. Jackets popped themselves in campfires. Biting wasps hovered about noses, hoods, satchels and canteens. Worse still, they gravitated towards the dark red of his hair. Hadvar had never liked insects of any kind, to be honest. There were dozens of foggy childhood memories – infested gourds in Aunt Sigrid's garden, whittled-out rafters behind _The Sleeping Giant_, Ralof and Gerdur throwing rocks into the trees that would one day feed her inherited sawmill – to make him squirm at six-legged nuisances. All of them inspired phantom itching, and another uncomfortable bubble he did not really want to explore. Instead, he'd jump and duck and slap the back of his neck uselessly at every zuzz or wing-beat. Two welts and a crushed bumble later, the good-natured Auxiliary from Riverwood was not feeling wonderfully about his day.

"All things considered, soldier… we're making good time," their commander had remarked, speaking to no one in particular, a comment made in that grizzled but inclusive manner of his.

Hadvar sometimes thought General Tullius, wrinkled eyes and off-center sneers, reminded him of a graying wolverine. Or a badger. The first might've been a mightier image than the second, but make no mistake: he had nothing but respect for Skyrim's military governor. Mostly, anyway. It was difficult to know how their Cyrodiil-born superior, bearish and direct, felt about this violent country behind closed doors. He was an individual of few words and hardly any poetic ones; but for the gruff military character of their battalions, _stoic_ and _discontent_ were both traits of an acceptable leader. There was less to know about his opinion of Nords and their homeland, always soaked in blood or snow. Maybe it didn't matter. Legate Rikke's ashen expressions probably said more to that subject than any of the man's clumsy speeches could. They were scheduled to meet up with her scout regiment, thawed from the north reaches, outside Whiterun in one week's time.

"Aye, Sir." Hadvar answered, because no one else had. There were reins sitting slack in one large left hand and a sheathed gladius waiting for his right. The steed he'd been issued was a young spotted roan, strawberry-brown, and the sleepiest beast beneath an army saddle in this entire hold. It looked lackluster and backwoods compared to General's muscled dapple grey. His heels goaded the colt's ribs to keep it awake. "We should be set up near the passage sometime tonight if we keep this pace."

"That's what I wanted to hear. I didn't think this little 'detour' would detain us. Can't wait to see Rikke's face should all go as planned, and we ride up with a dead king's cowl on the backs of our shields." Tullius grinned under the bitter wings of his helmet. It was at once both a cruel and encouraging expression. "There anything else I should be updated on, ah… what was your name, soldier?"

When he'd been newly-assigned to the general's company from Fort Greymoor, this wouldn't have been a surprise. Two months later, it still wasn't. In deeds and rank badges, this well-mannered warrior was never a man who had stood out terrible much – not that it bothered him. The imperial (small-i) way was one of victory and practicality over sentimental brotherhood. He liked this philosophy better than empty honor and hollow war tales. You did not live off fame, but service performed. "Hadvar, Sir."

"Right. That was it." There was nothing to suggest he'd really even had a hint. You could tell the commander didn't like his accent – a tiny twitch in that yellowed, leathery cheek; a bristle whenever their rural-born enlistees spoke – but Hadvar understood such aversions were common among outsiders. Homeland Nords didn't have the finest reputation for tact and intellect. Being in Skyrim was a constant fight with prejudices, yours and others; fairness was a hurdle when civility was hard. He didn't let it bother him. At least there was an _attempt_ at tolerance in this army, gestures forced by footmen and captains, as cultures clashed in pteruges. Their squad proved no exception. General, sleepless eyes and haggardness, tried to manufacture warmth. "Well. I know I won't be the only one tired, hungry and ready for drinks after we've shipped a few carts full of traitors off to Sovngarde. Don't suppose you'd also be able to tell me the closest place between Helgen and civilization with a decent inn?"

"That would be Riverwood, Sir. It lies on the due north road to Whiterun. Not a large town, but they should have room to board our unit."

Tullius grunted recognition; his lip, cut with some decades-old scar, curled. "You a scout or something, son?"

"No, Sir. I'm from there."

Another grunt – not a question, but a name. A mere statement of fact. "Hadvar."

"Sir."

General thumped his charger in the gut and moved forward to the front of their line. It was a simple name, not too difficult to recall… yet those details hardly mattered in the wake of a thousand bigger worries and gold plate glittering through juniper branches. He wouldn't remember it in an hour, but that was all right with Hadvar. He hadn't done much worth a general's memory, to be honest – and was never comfortable with too much attention, anyway.

Yes, the ride through Falkreath Hold was typical, casual, and not too terribly interesting… not unlike the Legionnaire, himself.

Hadvar was a good soldier – and, generally speaking, thought of himself as a good man. He had never been a division's brightest troop, but he used his head, and tried not to let the uglier Nord traditions or blood-pounding cloud his better judgment. He was not very handsome – the fair-maned midland children teased him about his color since Hadvar was small – but all right. He had Uncle Alvor's smith's shoulders, Mother's sharp chin and vaguely blue eyes, all his teeth, a pale complexion that got very embarrassingly pink when angry, and – of course – Grand Ma Embla's hair. He hit fairly hard; could haul unsplit logs up the lumber rack; but there had been many men in Solitude and (and even a few in Riverwood) stronger, larger and meaner than him. He was not the finest or best-spoken. He was not the toughest, fastest, shrewdest or most brave. In all things, he fell somewhere in-between.

This never troubled Hadvar. He was not a boastful or competitive personality. _ "Hadi! Where's our good lad?" _Uncle and Auntie used to beckon, calling him home from the thickets around their village, looking for a hale, pudgy, awkward child of ten years. And he always would come running… bounding to their stoop, all panting and flush-faced, to see what was the matter. Alvor and Sigrid had babied him since their nephew came to live in that cramped wood cabin beside The White River – after Forsworn had taken both his parents' lives in a silver mine outside Markarth. Hadvar had been only seven. The softness of boyhood had worn bare since then, but the praise stuck. Ask this soldier what he was, and in one word, he'd answer _good_. A good man: one who did what he must, met his commitments, did not condemn too harshly. It was enough of a life earned. He did not need gallantry or glory songs. The young Auxiliary mostly hoped that others looked upon him as a thoughtful, kind and careful person – someone to rely upon in a fight or a famine – and this would suffice for being a "true son of Skyrim" more than battle-braids, bad speech and a wall of bloody Thalmor ears ever could.

Hadvar was average in most things, but he had always been a good citizen – fine solider, too, mind you – and good citizens-turned-soldiers didn't start lighting fires or sharpening axes when politics took unfavorable turns.

The breadth of their officers, most shipped in green from Nibenean barracks, had adjusted roughly to residence in this country. It was partially a product of Imperial (capital-I) supremacy, and other parts the fault of their own nation's mistrust for those who looked, acted, spoke differently from themselves. These foreigners were shorter and sterner and worshipped timeliness like old gods. They determined honor from gold badges, formal stripes, cabinet seats and bank holdings; they scoffed at superstitions surrounding barrows or fairy rings. They did not love their children right, he'd heard Hilde say many times; there was more import placed on progress and self-refinement than family. They were hardnosed, unsentimental people who did not understand the precious principles of _to the last man_ or _following your heart… _and, if they could, probably would've found a way to commoditize them. But they had been everything an Empire needed. Hadvar could appreciate the truths, trade and reason they brought; he hoped there was something in the obstinate, hot-blooded northern way to offer their union, too.

And, if not, he always thought himself to be a pretty reasonable Nord. He even liked the lists. Honest to Tal… _Akatosh_, he did; they'd grown on him.

Uncle and Auntie hadn't been happy when he expressed a desire to join the Legion, but neither had stopped him. It was understood that chirping hamlet didn't offer much opportunity for a person like him – who had never been handy with forging, and cringed at the thought thirty years chopping wood 'til his back gave out. Besides, it was high time the lad set to fashioning his own profession. They had little Dorthe to look after, now… and Hadvar was nearly grown when he stepped off the docks at Solitude with leathers rolled under one arm.

There had been so many people, an echo of those twisting marble streets in his childhood. Fish and incense replaced the smell of wheat and sweet timber. Fine stone housed shelves of college books and nobles that wore emeralds, perfume, cashmere. Lit celebration fires burned, bards recited poetry on tower steps, vendors sold spiced Hammerfell ales and sandwiches made with strange meat. _So_ many people, horses, carriages, guardsmen, storefronts, inns… it was hard to make sense of it all. So he hadn't, really. Not for a long time. That first dawn in Skyrim's capital, exploration took a backseat to duty, something even farmland bumpkins could manage. A line of army outfitters in that powerful Castle Dour had handed him polished steel, two sets of uniform clothes, and cut the boy's short ponytail at his jaw. He'd been passed a newly-minted blade and swiveled around towards the training courtyard with a pat and a shove. And that was that. Suddenly he was not Hadi the Town Smith's orphan, but Hadvar of Riverwood, Legion Auxiliary under Emperor Titus Mede II.

It had all moved at a brisk pace, but he recalled those early days very well. Conditioning had been easy and satisfying. Meals were hearty and imperial mattresses soft enough. His fledgling platoon kicked in a bandit's door six weeks after their induction ceremony and liberated eight crates of stolen East Empire moonstone, small rewards that then seemed exciting. He was the point man. Two steps through a darkened cavern threshold, body full of adrenaline, he'd stumbled into a barbarian and hit that villainous lookout so hard to the face with his shield that molars flew, neck cracked. Blood welled on slick rock face. It was the first person Hadvar had killed and it didn't feel as bad as he'd been afraid it would. He could remember sending home his payment with a humble and deep-seated pride. Or maybe not pride, per se, but_ relief_. That day, the clean and polite recruit from Whiterun Hold had learned he could be an imperial soldier and still qualify as a _good man_. This was more than enough for him.

Hadvar was a simple name, unmemorable and plain as it was, but it fit him… and you know, it could have always been something unpronounceable like Fritdjov or Grwyn.

He startled at another bee only to discover it had been a fly. Would've put his helmet on to try and ward them off, but it shortened the trooper's vision, and Hadvar thought that an unacceptable risk in all these shadowy trees. Tullius had ordered them to abandon the direct route to Jarl Balgruuf's lands when a handful of Bosmer hunters came sprinting up with reports of Stormcloak encampments. A modest, tired unit, they'd said – full of lieutenants moving with anxious stares and quiet feet. General's eyes lit up with a predatory and well-fed instinct. _Officers_. It meant an easy take, a disquieted band, a big catch. So he'd steered them to intercept these travelling rebels in the bristling scrub beneath Bonechill Pass. Hadvar couldn't say he was a lover of sneak attacks on stray rangers or all this shifty strategizing… but then again, you can't always get what you want.

And he certainly could have done without these damned bees.

"HADVAR. Pay attention. Rear guard – back of the line! NOW."

… could have done without Captain Vera, too. And the first problem was definitely easier to manage than the last.

Hadvar's direct superior was a short but intimidating woman – harsh, scowling, built like a sabercat in a mudcrab shell. Dark hair was knotted flawlessly tight beneath a crescent helm; dark skin spoke to hours spent drilling under a wicked Skyrim sun. Her voice was grating and more like a dog bark than anything else. It took no more than that that brutal, telltale shout; his horse, his equipment, and the man himself all clattered nervously forward to obey. There was something infuriating and unsettling about the captain. You got the feeling she enjoyed executions. You always had this perturbed inkling she'd simply lunge forward and bite for your throat if you didn't pretend to, as well.

Hadvar recognized that Imperial (small-i _and_ capital-I) intuition required a few furious Captain Veras to keep order, but that didn't mean he had to like it… or her.

The Auxiliary signed. He wasn't looking forward to springing upon a tidy troupe of Stormcloaks in that fragile, needled-strewn snow of the Pass. It was an invariable experience. When you cornered Legionnaires, they would fight with the brute force of tigers, slashing with menacing claymores and arrow volleys… but knew when to fall back. Ulfric's martyrs would throw themselves upon spears before sullying their honor with the "cowardice" of retreat. Hadvar had seen many a farmer's wife-turned-scout run hopelessly onto sword tips in the name of _Skyrim for the Nords_.

"_You _jump_ into it,"_ he could remember Aldis instructing during a blade-play demonstration. Hadvar had held forth his weapon, sharpened to a quick, and leapt into a combat dummy with one tidy little spring. It spat stuffing onto cobblestone in the same way a miller's jugular spat blood with his hands full of hammer, his heart full of a false king's promise, a Legion sword stuck straight down to the lung. _Jump_, thrust, step, forward. Jump, thrust, forward. Jump. _ Forward_. Eventually it became as mundane and necessary a motion as simply moving on down the dirt roads of his fathers' country. You did not think about it too much and you were all right. There were plenty of reasons to press on: the undeniable mood of politics, succession and stability. Innocent slaughtered by lawlessness no fief could reign in. And the grim, bracing realization that it _was_ necessary. No peace could be had with the selfish master of fanatical hordes; no calm could be brought upon peoples told every dead suit of steel was a victory for their race. Hadvar personally tried not to envision the faces of men he had known behind bear helms and blue scarves.

"_The next time I see you, you die,"_ he'd told Ralof when they'd accidentally crossed paths outside Embershard Mine last year. It was hard to forget how different and how horrible Gerdur's brother looked under that sunny afternoon – gold hair badly-cut and braided; paint made of mud, blood and dye smacked across his face. He'd had a wolf's jowls for a helmet and bear claws for gloves. And he'd flashed a similarly wolfish twist between grin and snarl that almost made the soldier withdraw his bargain – one that promised similar treatment when they inevitably met again.

Hadvar rode that overgrown path between Fort Greymoor and Riverwood once every three months to check in on Uncle Alvor and Aunt Sigrid. Confrontation was certain in those rocky underpasses below Bleak Falls. Ulfric's men did not tout their presence in Whiterun Hold, but he knew – surely as soft boot tracks in the dirt and elk bones stripped clean – they were there, lurking, peeking on their own relatives' unassuming homes. He never ventured out without shield strapped on saddlebag. He was aware how some of his old neighbors now looked at him – how Hod's young son began to eye the royal red trim of his Legion suit with very adult derision – how Gerdur's hellos grew cold and taciturn – how townsfolk vented silent hatred towards the coarse imperial flags rippling above their wooden gates. He could remember taking Little Dorthe's hand one evening by a warm, familiar forge – under an immense, familiar night sky – and telling her sternly to never go into Frodnar's house, unable to quite explain why.

It was a fearful disquiet. Great battles were rare, but skirmishes had become increasingly common in these past several seasons. No surprise they did not face war directly. Legionnaires marched en force upon foes, daunting and massive lines of fighters. Stormcloaks struck from the trees, deadly guerillas to a slow-moving convoy… but most of that desperate, peasant army petered out into bloodbaths the moment they got within arm's reach. What could you expect from a revolution armed with sticks, furs, and hatchets made for cutting wood?

He did not pity them – not for the treason they'd committed – but sometimes, Hadvar did wonder if this was all a horrible waste.

"Ouch!" There – right on the underside of his knee – sting number three. It already stood bright scarlet between stirrups, plated boots and the fur lining of imperial skirt. One hand smacked sharply, but changed nothing. The bee flew off mostly unharmed. "Son of a…"

He looked down at the welt, down at his fair-weather horse, out through the wild pine groves ahead.

Hadvar wouldn't say he was pleased about it – but, you know, it could have always been worse.


	2. The Soldier's Profession

**The Soldier's Profession**

It got worse.

It got worse, one half-day ahead of schedule, in a shallow coldwater creek just outside that chilling pass. They had left their carriages hidden behind white rock face and ventured deeper into the wood on foot. At Captain Vera's order, six men on horseback rode far ahead – towards scents of burning tinder – to spook dissenters from brush, flush them away from a fake army, and into the real ambush waiting here. They had been gone perhaps eight hours before a sentry whistled attention. The Legion unit fell quickly into cover – ears twitiching, swords sharp, stares sharper. Hadvar had been crouched in this light dust of snow for almost forty minutes, until his back grew sore, knees stiff upon the pebbled bedrock just beyond Whiterun Hold. It had been so quiet. He wondered if anyone was coming at all.

And then, as it almost always happened, someone did.

Boots crunched upon dead twigs before hidden archers could react. It was difficult to tell how many Stormcloaks were attached to this travelling unit from his current position, hunkered behind icy boulders; about ten, he guessed, perhaps three of them mounted. As General's information predicted, the group was small. A personal retinue, obviously; a collection of lieutenants, moving swiftly and secretly, guarding their commanders with the fearsome devotion of mother cats. And there had been rumors why. But Hadvar didn't vest a great deal of faith in rumors – not since Solitude introduced him to the value of provable, unarguable facts – and certainly wasn't going to start up now. Not on the verge of a skirmish, and _especially_ not when the implications of these rumors were enough to make both big, clumsy palms sweat to his blade hilt. Better not to act or presume rashly. Best to just sit, wait, and see.

That's what Hadvar of Riverwood kept telling himself, anyway. Sit, wait, see.

Except he couldn't see much of anything from where the soldier was currently ducked – anything beyond Captain's carnivorous attentions, that is. She actually might have been salivating when the footsteps stopped. Movement stilled out in that expanse of treeless slush. The clearing was sickeningly quiet – that wrong, stalled moment just before predators hit. Songbirds bickered overhead. Pine canopies shivered in low breeze. He could not see the Stormcloak hunters, but he _could_ watch Vera hunched just ahead of him, fierce in anticipation, her breaths slow as a stalking lion. She did not look back at the gathering of men bent behind these boulders. Her blade hand was incredibly still. Her ale yellow eyes focused tighter than a wolf's.

"Scout," someone called – a deep bass, somber enough to tremble the aspens, that somehow did not need to call at all. The voice was like an avalanche. Hadvar instantly felt he knew it.

"I hear, Lord. I am about it," came an answer – another male pitch, thick with woodlands, texture older than its bearer's years. The tone was tense with sour intuitions. And he could not explain why, but in a matter of instants and the crunch of fur soles, Hadvar felt he ought to know this one, too. "Wait a moment. I just want to walk a bit ahead… get up on those rocks and get a better look at the woods. Be right with you."

A dead, grim buzz. It was the sound a father bear might make if he could speak. "No. You will stay where you are. Gunjar – go to look ahead."

"All respect to Gunjar, Lord…" An irreverent, smirking mood for a man about to die. Hadvar's hamstrings were beginning to ache against the skin of his steel-shod boots. He glanced up towards Captain. She looked back without seeing him, front teeth a hungry glint behind the pale rose brown of her face. Their superior's entire expression had intensified into feral worry, aggression, expectancy; it told them _be ready_, and need not say for what. You could sense the impatience rolling off her like itching powder. Hadvar's stomach felt tight and cramping, as it always did before a battle. "But I'd as lief have gotten halfway up that mountain yonder before this scarecrow could climb his mother's-"

"Shut that tear in your face, Ralof."

You couldn't think about it.

"I'm only speaking truth as it is, Gunjar. What between that sixth morning pint and those round woman's hips of yours…"

All the people you had killed, might kill – dead stares that were familiar beneath hauberk and heaume. You were better off closing your eyes and memories. You shouldn't get lost in peasant things that didn't matter anymore. You shouldn't listen for laughter and chuffs that might have once been your own, your brothers', your neighbor's. You couldn't soften in a metal suit.

"Woman's hips..? You son-of-a-bitch, I saw your fat arse trying to scramble up into that huntsman's perch yestereve – 'bout broke your legs tripping back down – and you call _me_ round?"

You couldn't.

"No need for name-calling. Brynja, here, _is_ a woman – and she whines twice less than you do."

So you didn't.

"Come over here and say that. Talos help me, Ralof; I'll hit you so hard, your ancestors'll be sick up in Sovngarde! I'll turn your nose inside out! I'll punch that scraggly crabgrass right off your face!"

Something dismal echoed – a flurry like doom – and Hadvar couldn't tell if it was an old friend's laughter, familiar and gutting; blackbirds, caught in juniper; or the banging of arrowheads against back shields. Before he could be frightened, an unhappy grunt stopped it all. Bickering stopped. That voice was low-spoken, yet it was somehow the size of a mountain storm. You expected voices like these to resonate from the bellies of dragons. You did not foresee hearing them in tattered rebel bands, dissolving petty fights, weaving through powdery earth and shale-scattered snow.

"Enough," it said – and no more. "You are my brethren as much as you are my lieutenants. But take care you do not forget where we are. This is not the place to be merry men."

"Aye, my Jarl, I know."

_My Jarl._

That single word compressed the hinterland air from every imperial lung. Vera's face was clearer than frozen lakewater. Breath fogged. Her upper lip twitched. You could see every stitch – every fiber – of color in those wide and fraught eyes.

"Gunjar, to your duty."

Padding feet cut the calm in an intimidating way. They grew nearer without much chance to plan – excitement gripped Captain's face with each frosty crunch until she could not stay still anymore, until none of them could bear it, until there was a distinct scrape of soles against rock directly overhead. Hadvar gripped his sword tightly and looked straight up. He saw the shadow before either ranger or soldier saw one another. They hid only until you could hear the Stormcloak's breath huff up the side of that boulder.

That was it. There could be no more waiting. No pretense, no announcement, no formal boundaries drawn. No more ducking and checking and withholding until the most opportune, mathematical striking moment. Just one last step, and-

"_EMPIRE_," Vera roared – a death threat, a pledge, a meaningless word without fervor behind it– leapt first over the stone, and drove three feet of gladius directly through Gunjar's ribs.

Jump, step, _forward_ – Hadvar's own blade had opened a stomach.

Everything was incredibly quiet, as it always became in the instant of battle. Hues grew spitefully bright later, and his ears would ring, and weird metal tastes danced through tight teeth… but for now, that roar drowned all into strange, suspended, underwater silence. He could not hear the scream of the woman he'd killed or see any lines upon her face or feel her breastbone crack around steel – or tell that she was a woman – merely saw that body slip heavily off his weapon and hit dirt. Hadvar could not really see the next person he lunged for but for pointed, slow, lucid shapes in cold air. Bear fur and blue. The world narrowed to those slatted, forward-facing confines of his helm. Impact tremors seemed to thrum at every clash – earth against feet, sword tip through chainmail, shield pressing corpses (soon-to-be-corpses) off it. There must have been bow strings twanging but he could not tell past the odd thunder. Vera pulled a smashed arrow out of her pauldron with mouth open to a roar. Someone's head bent backwards – too far – blood fountaining, neck crooked like a hatcheted elm. He grabbed a cuirass scruff and pulled the wearer backwards onto his blade.

It was not challenging. Not really, when you only considered the barren steps of this dance… the clanking piecemail, performance and platitudes that together made up a soldier's profession. A soldier's profession was at its core all about progress. That was the soul of imperial headship and it evidenced itself in every agenda. You stayed in your regiment line as much as you could – and when you couldn't, you drew new ones for yourself. You swung hard as you advanced and you gave no ground. Legionnaires did not scatter through woodland and creep. They pressed forward – steady, clearheaded, assured. Progress. Custom. Every day. _Easy_.

Easy was good; Hadvar had never been a coward or simpleton, but he didn't like when things were too difficult.

Warfare always seemed to pass very slowly in the moment, motions sluggish and movements disturbingly plain. When everything ended and the spearheads lowered again, it was extraordinary to discover how short these bursts of time had been. They had been fighting for maybe five minutes in the brisk grip of this middle hold before General blew his cornu horn. Hadvar recognized the grotesque sound of brass and ivory. He pushed an advancing body away with fear alight in its eyes – hard as he could, far and unmerciful – and watched with confusion how that faceless enemy turned back to a hunter: battered leather, snapped javelin, petrified expression. He lifted his sword towards the lad and froze there.

It was not a sure thing which they heard first: the yield cry, or their commander's sign to stand down. A voice bellowed _STOP_. Hadvar did. His gladius was dripping and there was a bit of scalp clutching to his hoplon. There hung a nonspecific heaviness in every limb that made breathing seem like an act of will. His throat was too swollen with adrenaline to swallow. Steel and pelt and warm flesh were all the same disaster where they tangled in this melting field. Three little fingers on his right hand had jammed sickly blue. He felt like his joints were all rusted up.

And that was the day Ulfric Stormcloak surrendered.

Temporarily, at least.

There had been no terms of parlay. There had been no reinforcement wave. The only risk that greeted them there at the sullen foot of Bonechill Pass had been this silence – a penetrating moment of indecisive, foggy quiet – in which twenty fleet lieutenants faced twelve Legion officers in steel mail. Twelve – plus ten archers, one smith, three pointmen. Five Stormcloaks had died immediately; the rest hung in suspension. Rebels and soldiers merely breathed. Frost melted beneath their unmoving and uncertain heels. Metal glittered in light snowfall. Fleece and iron crunched frigid shoots. You could see the eye of every man as they ingested the weight of this decision laid before them. There was no mounting battle; they looked at one another in wordless, mutual astonishment.

"Stop," Ulfric had said, the order its own explanation, his logic stronger than his stubborn warriors' hearts. "There is no sense to doing this."

Blood flowered below shaken faces. The Jarl of Windhelm stepped around his crippled stallion with massive hands open and bare. He yanked a spatha out of its gut and tossed it, unflinching, to Tullius's feet. You could not hear what words he spoke beyond the screaming of a dying horse. You did not hear anything else from him, because with that gesture finished, General ordered three Quaestors to "bind this son-of-a-bitch;" they tied hands, chained ankles, sliced the mighty polar cape from his back, then finally fixed a gag firmly between molars and tongue.

That was the day Hadvar of Riverwood heard Ulfric Stormcloak's voice. It gave no speeches, no ancient oaths or Thu'um that blackened the sky, but perhaps those were only legends told for simple men. It was a voice Hadvar would remember for the rest of his life.

The man who would call himself High King was not what he had expected – was not the giant from barbarian tales. Ulfric was stout, built not like a mammoth but an average man, beard and braids faded sand rather than the charred color of dragon skin. He did not tower over even humble Legionnaires. He did not menace or gnash. Those eyes that did not look at any one soldier in particular were not grey with cracking thunderheads – they were merely grey. No one fought or summoned beast armies from mountaintops. Instead, he walked calmly, discontentedly, up to the nearest wagon and boarded. Its wheels barely squeaked. His stature hunched with the large step of climbing in.

He did not look like the death of order. Ulfric Stormcloak looked haggard with travel and cold.

"Good work, men! Good fighting, boys," General toasted them, genuinely sounding like it had been. He was grinning in a slackened, disbelieving way. A few triumphant whoops fluttered treetops through the doubt and shock. Hadvar felt a little woozy. He dropped his shield into the snow for a minute to help secure weapons, glad the flap of skin fell off. It was hard to wrap one's mind around what had just happened, how fast everything came to pass; he didn't try very hard. The hunter was still looking fearfully forward. You could feel life plummet from these defeated rogues as they stood around tailored militiamen, barely having clashed, each brigade unable to comprehend the magnitude. It sunk deeper than the cadavers upon their toeprints.

Vera – alive, because he could think of her in no other way – had a heavy cord looped around one shoulder. She looked at him on accident and smiled. Her eyes were dazed. Her helmet and dark mane stuck together. Her grand front teeth were coated in blood.

Captain tossed him a quarter of rope. Hadvar took it and bound the hunter boy where he stood. Then he walked back to the caravan train, milling openly with soldiers again, pteruges clacking, head spinning a bit with what had just occurred.

Granted, the Auxiliary had known this confrontation lay ahead of them – a fight on fragile grass – since departing Falkreath. It had been in their mission plan, and it had been in the way General Tullius's eyes flashed keen for blood. It had certainly been in their training daily training regimes. But you could never really train yourself for what came after: the gory slog; the grime and cruor churning slush into horrible mud; the glimpses of hooked snouts, lopsided grins, odd birthmarks, tossled manes and misaligned bites that left you _wondering_, terrified, for nights. Had you known that man? Did you carry coal buckets to some old grandmother's house ten years ago, hello one another in one of Whiterun's trading stalls, toast with a niece or cousin who shared his surname? Memories could be ignored or pushed aside; fears could be numbed by discipline. Armor could be shined and swords sharpened on battle eves. But – even when superiors instructed you to breathe, count uniforms, be always prepared – there was little else you could do.

No, there was no preparing for that.

They locked the last captive's cuffs and sat them all inside wood dogcarts. Hadvar fought not to notice familiarity or scowls in the tousled crowns of blond. Not to notice if there had been a sneer or empty recognition on one lieutenant's face when Vera kicked him into the front of a lead wagon. Or if there was still a scar from breaking sleds in the foothills beyond Hilde's house – somewhere beneath unkempt beard, dirt, remnants of paint when they all marched to war. Or when Ulfric's choking provoked fury and a few curses he had heard once before. Or that Gunjar had red hair.

Hadvar tried not to look at their faces much. He sat aback that plodding strawberry roan as they wound the gravel road to Helgen, stunned by how quiet it all was, how routine, listening to groaning carriages and muffled wind through evergreen.

"Greymoor," Captain grunted, trudging up to the withers of his horse, regaining her gruffness when the last few prisoners were fastened and shut in. Sometimes their superior called them by residence fort rather than name or station. It was a habit out of crustiness more so than need. "Broke your hand?"

He caught the critical look she regarded his knuckles with as Hadvar had reached over to secure a saddlebag. The Auxiliary's helm was now banging at his steed's side; Vera had not even thought about removing hers. Its wing glistened with blood drops. She had not even wiped her face, for the crimson was beginning to dry out and splinter there, and you could no longer tell if it came from Captain's cracked lips or had simply landed upon them. "No, Sir. Just banged it a bit is all."

"Swordarm. Make a brace." There seemed to be a fleck of chopped bone sticking to plate above that hawklike eye, just above Vera's sooty bang fringes; it made Hadvar comb fingers over his own russet hair.

"I don't want to lose my grip yet, Cap—"

They sounded like the only two people talking in all Skyrim at the moment. A loose wheel struck rock and nearly popped its axle.

"When I ask what you _want_, Auxiliary, I'll let you know. Brace it," she snapped. So he did.

You never truly felt safe carrying cargo of the enemy sort. But they knotted them to the best of their resources and abilities. Every man had been frisked and stripped of weapons (or potential weapons) before being listed, organized, and ushered to a place in the file. There had been no time to replace armor with harmless regulation rags, and little reason; the weather was cold, and Stormcloak apparel rarely passed for more than said rags anyway. Hadvar wished he could have left his hand alone, at least until Helgen, but you had to be good at obeying orders in the Legion – and this soldier was. He broke a handful of birch sticks with a pugio as they trudged on. He fastened them to the purpled, tender digits with torn bandage. He was not ambidextrous, and would have to pull these makeshift casts quickly if trouble began.

Though it didn't seem likely to. Jarl Ulfric sat quietly in the wagon. He'd looked Skyrim's governor directly in the tough, filthy, sweat-streaked face – then bowed his head, and carried on. Living lieutenants did the same. They turned their sights to shoe soles and floorboards. They would not meet your gaze.

Hadvar sure was relieved for that.

There was a trick to swallowing down those second-guesses, those pre-skirmish doubts – the grim, quiet fear of pulling chainmail off your brother's severed head – and searching dead men's eyes was not it. You do not look into their faces. You can watch hands, knees, feet; be sharpened to escape like the crows that pick skull flesh off Solitude's Caste Dour pikes; glare at mismatched bodies beneath grizzly pelt plate. You could even kick them (when they deserved it) or offer mead or bread (when they didn't). But you did not look into those bleached faces. War prisoners, it was understood, had no answers for a loyal soldier. Their shallow stares were like the sockets in a skeleton brow; mortality is felt, tasted, _known_ in the glaze of dark pupils before it poisoned anywhere else. It can destroy resolve and yank up the roots of your rightness, true but flailing, in a cold tundra sun.

So Hadvar tried not to look at the wan row of faces – dirty, hateful, subdued – struck with the fury of countrymen driven wrong, and silenced by knowing their death.

He had been on many rides like this one. Some were worse than others. Occasionally they chatted a bit – swapping insults, bland commentary, offensive jokes about factions or Khajiit. Other times curiosity overcame hostile temperaments and questions about cities, shared relatives and regional politics were exchanged. Sometimes there was even song – sometimes from both sides – but not this day.

It did not feel like _the_ battle; it did not foreshadow great change or major victory. It was barely even a qualified fight. When that pulse of bad energy settled, rancor flattening down into the silent repercussion, Ulfric's capture outside Bonechill Pass was remarkably ununique. It had been a scuffle won like any mundane, afterthought other.

These marches always seemed to end the same way.

Resistance – if there was any – would come and go in fierce, short flickers like candlelight in windy nights. There might be a spark early-on… there may be attempted deception, confrontations, a crude bludgeon in the back of your neck if a cart-steerer is not careful. They were not optimized and cookie-cut like proper Legions. Stormcloaks willingly conscripted the lame, the mad, elderly folk, women more proficient with pans than maces, farmers armed with their own pitchforks, children. They took whatever they had to, whomever they could. He had even once seen a wick-thin girl, could not have been but fourteen, roll backwards across the bench and jump to her death over Dragon Bridge. Hadvar had been driving that wagon. She had seen the foundry smoke and flagstone towers of Solitude and could not withstand it anymore. The frail blonde body broke into pieces on misty rockface before he could stand. It snapped. It was engulfed by the roar of white water, and washed away before any of them could stop the resulting cry.

He did not know why it had mattered at all. It was difficult to say why a suicide stopped their wheels turning – so timely, so progressive, so on-schedule. You couldn't really put something like that into words. You could not say why it rattled you so badly. You were not going to rescue her even had your dive been fast enough to reach that last flash of movement, not truly; you would have pulled a child back from doom only to cut off her head later. And yet, it _had_ mattered. That poignant death over Karth River had shaken them all, whatever the color of cowl. That single caravan of traitors, flushed from the morning thickets outside Harmugstalh, rose. They upturned three carriages in outrage – a last, resounding shout to make inevitable death ride sweeter on their arid tongues – and for a moment, he had wondered if they might tear a victory from taut imperial chain.

But it never lasted. Fate had closed a fist around each throat – their penalty for rending this country apart – sure and severe as the shackles locked there. They would invariably stumble, lose momentum, snuff out in a high prairie wind. And they would be collected quietly back into the file of order. At this point, where rage and war paint once made warriors of townsfolk, their faces always looked the same.

You could not sympathize or look for humanness there overmuch. You could not even think of them as being members of the same great mountain race. Shoot a rebel and expect blue blood. Pitch them onto a communal funeral pyre and watch for black, unconsecrated smoke. _"May as well be cows_, Captain Vera had told them, "_because they're not people"_; not anymore. They earned it – had reaped a harvest they sewed. A hard truth, but one Hadvar generally believed. What Ulfric and his selfish creed had done to Skyrim could not be forgiven. It could only be washed clean.

For the blood they had rained on these lofty grasses and snow drifts, for the way they made proud cliffsides ooze with their own peoples' suffering, Stormcloak's martyrs must all pay. A Legion of good men would push short-sighted revolution into defeat. Most would dissolve, he thought… return to their families and cabins and pine-choked townships on murky blue water. But many others would have to die. It was something soldiers had to accept. And this one had. Surrender was encouraged, but the moment soft Winterhold boots creaked across mildewed wood prison carts, their lives had filed in line for a headman or noose. It was implicit. It was understood.

These were the costs of a hinterland divided. One side was going to pay them – better it be a warmonger's pawns than Legionnaires and good, humble, decent men.

Having made her immediate rounds, checking for injuries or crumbling loyalties, Vera found a loose dun colt and swung upon it. Their saddles all creaked for oil. The Captain was not tall – short, actually – but compact and fierce as a pit bull. Even a war beast chuffed beneath her impact. "Lean into the wagon!" she hollered, voice hoarse, orders carried over the dull thump of shod hooves. A dismayed shuffle jostled their captives as they hunkered tighter. "Pull those limbs in or, by your pagan gods, you will lose them! You are prisoners of the Empire! Understand what that means! It means there will be no subversion and there will be no slouching!"

A Breton Auxiliary – a man Hadvar barely knew; had spoke to maybe a dozen times in camp, and already disliked – twisted around in his driver's seat to snicker. The blunt nose wrinkled beneath freckles that weren't friendly or pleasant. "Might need to use plainer tongue, sir. Doubt a one in this bunch of raggedy hayseeds knows what 'subversion' means."

A chained bladesman barked from beneath her thick burlap scarf. "I know what it means, you sons-of—"

"That's enough!" Captain warned, and shot her subordinate a stern look. The Stormcloak she ignored entirely. Her steed pawed. "Don't bait them. It isn't worth the breath it takes. They're not going anywhere. Just make sure no one tries to tip this cart."

Oppressed eyes followed in her wake as Vera trotted forward, authoritative, down the hobbled line. They scalded every steel shingle with spite. Hadvar did not intervene and did not attempt to pick features out of that winter-worn face. There was a girl sitting quietly next to the angered woman – a girl with round, dirty cheeks and soot unwinding two braids, pleats almost white in this mountain sun. She was dejected, slight, unspeaking in padded armor. Maybe seventeen summers, in the wrap of a scout.

Dimples on prisoners are nothing good soldiers needed to see. He studied the ruffled coral ears of his horse. He adjusted gear. He watched for squirrels and rabbits that ran in the gutters of this road.

"That's right," snarled the lieutenant beside her, unwilling to bypass this fight, disliking the notion of making life smoother. She was aiming foul words at the Breton who'd barbed her. She kept looking at Hadvar. "Don't talk to us. Don't waste your breath. Wouldn't want to exhaust yourselves, you red-bellied bastards—"

"Shut up back there!" Caldur barked, then turned scowling back to his draft team and slapped the reins.

Half of this vocation was the stuff of discipline and skill. The other half consisted of one basic rule: don't go hunting trouble. Keep your sword sharp and your nose down. Don't look for memoirs, tokens, private jests, reminders of a bad trip to Solitude, or where your childhood companion might sit in the headsman's line. Don't budge from rear guard to investigate. Don't skim the carts just to _check_, to put your mind at rest, because it probably wasn't (even though you knew it was). Don't glance up to that second wagon despite the fact you swear familiar eyes have fallen upon you. Don't meet challenging stares, don't hear your name if it's called, don't react. That was the business of keeping sane in a homeland war. Do that and the rest was improbably simple.

This was why, distasteful as she was, Hadvar realized Vera hadn't been wrong. Prisoners brought nothing but shadowy thoughts upon captors with heavy hearts and heavier shields. You did wisely to keep well enough away. There was no reason left to look at them; talk to them; make a thoughtless lunge on Dragon Bridge for a fistful of stitching, cornsilk braids, faded cerulean scarf, the bones chilled to ice within your skin.

Because it isn't the same girl and it isn't the same old Ralof.

Hadvar isn't stupid. Hadvar knows it's not the same. Yet it is hard to forget that last, failed glimpse – spun gold hair that disappeared beneath the current. He had hung halfway over that bridge wall with stiffness in his chest and nothing in the emptiness of his hands. They never felt so cold and so uncovered than above the haze of those thundering northern falls.

Captain Vera was brutish and wretched and much smarter than she let on. Better not to look. Better not to see the ghosts of hopelessness in every young face framed by soft, messy, too-bright yellow hair knots.

What would he have had to say to them, anyway?

Hadvar of Riverwood remained a good man, but sometimes he believed that the soldier's profession existed so that other good men could continue being good.

Hours later, as the moon rose high and capes bundled tightly around mouths – when Helgen's stern stone finally arched into view through these bristling grey-green trees – Tullius stood up in his stirrups. He was no good at speeches and it was how he always preambled, but that hardly mattered among men of their trade. Modest legions listened with raptness and bare knees. There was no sound – only the nicker of horses anxious for stalls, stressed wheels, jerky hauberk. Gold plate lit by a mild night, General pulled 'round at the fore of the ranks, and made this announcement clear: "Today we win a great victory for Skyrim and the Legion!"

And the Legion echoed approval in cheer. Hadvar cheered, too – though he did through the lump in his throat.

A soldier's profession was _simple_. That did not make it easy.


End file.
